Konoha Noire
by y1fellas
Summary: Luckless detective Alex Spencer dies of bad habits and is reborn in Konoha.
1. Chapter 1

Konoha Noire

Arc 1 Chapter 1

I am a one man army. That's not to say I'm as dangerous as an army, or that I could defeat an army, or that I am somehow worth an army. No. What I'm saying is there's one man marching in my army, and that one man is me. So really, I'm just an idiot.

Got the word back from the doctor this week. Surprise, surprise, that blood I've been coughing out lately? Lung cancer. Funny. I thought it'd be my liver that gave out first.

"Treatment?" he says. "How's chemotherapy sound?"

"Sounds like leaving my wife fifty grand in debt," I say. "Sounds like not eating solid food for the rest of my short and miserable life. Sounds like shit, of the kind that burns on its way out."

I call the ex-wife. Tell her the good news. "You gonna get treatment?" She asks.

"Nah."

"You leaving us anything?"

"Whatever's in my wallet."

"You gonna pay off the car before you punch out?"

"...Sure."

One of our better conversations. Didn't argue like usual.

My partner's nice enough to buy me a drink when I tell him. Still end up paying for most of the rounds though, cheap bastard.

He asks me how the family took it.

I told him I payed off the car.

He asks if I'm gonna quit smoking.

I light one up.

Finally, he asks if I'm gonna quit the force.

Tell him, "Hell no. If I'm lucky some crack-head'll stab me to death before my time runs out."

I was never very lucky.

My death bed. Heart monitor beeping, pipes in my throat, nurse changing my bedpans for me. And no, it's not even a pretty nurse. Some Mexican guy, probably got his degree from a manila envelope at a local back alley.

I hear they go for about four hundred each, these days.

Wife comes to see me before the end. Asks if I absolutely have to be cremated, 'cause she has a friend that can cut her a deal on pinewood casks.

"Be cheaper to donate my body to science. I hear that's free."

She actually smiles at my suggestion and says, "Thanks. Hadn't thought of that." First smile I got from her in years.

"Any chance I can see the kids before I go? I am sober."

She grimaces. "I'd have to drive them here after school, and it's a bit out of the way."

"...Well, nevermind then."

Dying sucked, but I was expecting that. I remember almost suffocating when I was a kid, thought it'd be cool to put a plastic bag on my head. Because I was a spaceman.

Now I'm a detective, and I at least lived out the 'shitting in adult diapers' part of being an astronaut. It's not so bad, I guess. Rather die having done some good in my life then spend it wasting billions out of Uncle Sam's back pocket and never get to be as famous as Neil Armstrong anyway.

I saved lives, brought bad guys to justice, tracked down license plates, tried my hand at good cop/bad cop only to find I was better at quiet cop. Had a few fights too, kept all my teeth but my nose was never quite straight after that one row with the transvestite. A few times I even shot some guys.

That was always cool.

In the end though, I guess I'm back to being an astronaut. Slowly drifting into the black as I run out of oxygen, mind fogging over and kinda wishing for one last second, one last chance to write an alimony check, or get spit on by a toothless meth head, or to have that immigrant nurse change my bedpan.

Ah well. Such is life, I guess.

* * *

><p>At six years old, Minami was too young to understand the implications of the fact that her unmarried mother was having a second child. Of course she'd heard some of the rumors, but she'd yet to have <em>that <em>particular talk and didn't really know what they were about.

_Since when did the village have a bicycle_,_ and what was wrong with everyone riding it?_

Adults were weird like that.

One thing she definitely knew, however, was that her Ka-san was not a very good parent. She'd seen the other children her age with their families. The Ka-san's didn't smell like sake, the Tou-sans were actually _there_, and strange men weren't invited over to make loud noises behind locked doors while the children slept on a tatami mat just outside.

And so she was worried. Sitting in the Konoha hospital waiting room, she was forced to realise that her's was a _bad _family. There was no Tou-san, the Ka-san was usually either being wierd from too much sake or angry from waking up after too much sake, and they were poor. Very poor.

As a secretary for a local trading union, Ka-san made just enough to pay rent, usually bring home one or two meals a day, and enough sake to keep her acting weird most nights.

Soon Minami would have an Imouto, a little sister, and that wasn't fair. Minami had wanted a sibling for a long time now, but… their family's newest member deserved three square meals a day, a mother that played with her, and a father. None of which she would get.

Being six years old, Minami knew she wouldn't be able to fix any of these problems for quite a while yet.

"Pardon me, little one." Her worrying was interrupted by a boy wearing a hitaite. At her blank look, he indicated the seat next to the girl. "Mind if I sit there?"

Glancing around, Minami saw every other chair in the waiting room was occupied, so she smiled at him and nodded. Sitting down next to her, he took out a book and began reading.

Turning back to her thoughts, Minami supposed that baby's don't really remember much of anything until they're about three years old, so… Maybe if she could fix things a little bit before then, her sister wouldn't know what it was like to have a bad family.

Well then, how could she fix things? She already knew there was no way she could convince Ka-san to stop spending so much on her drink, so if her sister wanted decent clothes and healthy meals, Minami would have to find a way to bring a little extra money into the house…

Hm… that would be tricky, because if there was a job out there that hired six year olds, Minami didn't know it.

But then again, now that she thought about it, she'd seen quite a few ninja around the village that weren't adults. The boy sitting right next to her didn't seem that old.

"Excuse me, Shinobi-san." She tugged on his sleeve.

"Hm?" he glanced across at her.

"How old are you?"

"Thirteen." He answered after a moment. "Why do you ask, ojou-chan?"

"I was wondering how old you have to be to be a ninja."

He shrugged. "Most people graduate when they're twelve, but some of the geniuses can be as young as seven or eight."

"Is it hard being a ninja?"

"Oh, definitely. Most people that enter the academy dropout well before graduation, and even if you do graduate there's no guarantee you'll make a genin team."

Minami frowned, and looked ahead. So, she _might _have a job by the time she was twelve years old, huh? "Does it cost anything to go to the ninja academy?"

"No, it's free and the village even offers loans, but if you drop out it'll be really hard to pay back the debt."

"Okay, thank you, Shinobi-san."

And with that, he turned back to his book. Okay, so Minami had a partial solution to the money problem, assuming she could become a ninja by age twelve, and even if she didn't make genin, it was a free education, so she might as well take advantage of it.

Now for the parent problem… Getting mother to marry someone seemed like the most obvious solution to acquiring a father, and as for fixing mother… Ugh, Minami didn't even know where to begin, there were just so many problems.

"Minami?" A nurse asked from her left.

"Hai?" She glanced across at the woman, still thinking about solutions for her mother.

"Your mother's resting now, and the baby's been moved to observation. You can see your sister now."

"Really?" Bouncing to her feet, Minami excitedly said, "Where is she? Can you take me to her? Is she cute?"

"I'm sure she's very cute." The nurse smiled indulgently. "If you just follow me, I'll take you to her."

Scampering along behind her guide, Minami was too excited to continue her planning. After a moment, she grew impatient and grabbed the nurses hand, trying to pull her forward. "Come on, come on!"

The walk was less than a minute long, but to the six year old it felt like ages before she had her face pressed up against the observation room window. Inside, several rows of squalling babies cried, and Minami glanced between them excitedly.

"Which one is she? Which one?"

"Let's see," The nurse flipped through her chart for a few seconds, before answering. "2-B, so… your new sister is the one that's second from the left, in the second row."

"That one?" Minami pointed through the window.

"No, sweetie, that's your right. Your sister's that one." The correct child was pointed out.

The breath caught in the young girl's throat as she saw her Imouto for the first time. "She's so little." She breathed. "Can I hold her?"

"No, not yet, sweetie."

"What's her name?"

"That… hasn't been decided yet." The nurse answered after a look at her charts. "Your mother passed out before she could choose one."

And wasn't that just typical? Minami snorted in exasperation.

"I need to go on my rounds, are you okay if I leave you here? You can make your way back to the waiting room on your own?"

She nodded, not really paying attention. As the nurse wandered off, Minami felt a growing resolve as she stared at the peaceful, slumbering form. Even if her Imouto wouldn't have the best family, she would absolutely have the best sister ever.

* * *

><p>Pretty sure I was the worst baby ever.<p>

Reincarnation, huh? Kinda surprised I wasn't reborn as a rat or some shit. Maybe I got lucky for once?

I'm gonna skip over a lot of my early years, because most of it was really fucking boring. That's not to say there weren't interesting moments (_holy shit, I'm sucking a woman's tits_) or embarrassing ones. Funny, can't believe I actually thought death would get me away from crapping into diapers all day. I guess it is true that you shit yourself when you die.

But for the most part my time was spent sleeping, lying on my back because couldn't move my neck, or trying to talk to the strange blurry women that ripped away what little dignity I (didn't) have left better than my ex-wife ever could. Which is saying something, because she was pretty fucking great at that. Eventually my eyes shaped up enough that I could actually see the women that were taking care of me. It was then that I realised a few things:

First, my new mother was one gorgeous dame. Seriously. She was in her mid thirties, right at that age where she had the sort of hips and rack that'd kill a man if he wasn't careful. Short, bushy black hair on her head, deep green eyes and beautiful pale skin. If I was still married, I woulda broken prenup in less than a minute just to get those legs to spread in my direction. As it stood though, I didn't have to do a damn thing seeing as how she bared her chest at me every day. Actually got really boring after a while.

Didn't take me long to get really sick of milk.

Secondly, there was something wrong with my new mother. Most of her time was spent crying in the corner of my room, drinking the sorta drinks I loved but my liver never did. Honestly, she was a terrible mother. Usually she forgot to feed me and my elder sister had to convince her to do it. Which is fucked up. A six year old girl shouldn't have to deal with that shit. My wife went through a bout of that post natal depression crap too, but this woman took it to scary new levels. I woulda suggested she see a shrink if I could actually say a damn thing.

Thirdly, my new elder sister was… pretty fucking amazing, really. I'd never even heard of a six year old that actually did a decent job taking care of a newborn baby and a grown ass woman, but she did it. Whenever she wasn't at school, she spent her time prying bottles out of her mother's hands and trying to teach me to speak, which was helpful seeing as how I didn't know a damn word of their language at first. It was sad, really. When my daughter had been that age, she was playing with her dolls and squealing her heart out to whatever shitty pop tune came on the radio. I would have tried to help the girl, but I couldn't even sit up on my own so I just spectated and tried to root for the poor thing.

Weird thing about her though, she had white hair. No, really. White. What kinda six year old dyes their hair white? Not sure where she got the dye from anyway, because we were dirt poor.

It might have been a different culture, but I could tell from the smell of mold, the size of their meals, and the way some asshole broke into the house to steal all our furniture, that we lived in a bad neighborhood. My mother constantly buying alcohol probably didn't help put three square meals a day on the table, either.

Oh, and the final thing I realised, after I could finally move my own goddam head? I had a vagina.

So, never mind getting lucky with this reincarnation shit. It was about three months before I had the full tally of my new situation, but I got the list: 1, I'd been reborn into a poor as dirt family, with, 2, a depressive alcoholic mother, 3, in a bad neighborhood, and 4, I was now a girl.

...Can't believe I actually thought I'd get a break after I died. Shoulda known life would always find a way to bend me over.


	2. Chapter 2

Konoha Noire

Arc 01

Chapter 01

Koyomi swallowed, staring at Suruga-san as she walked just a little ahead of him. And what a walk it was. Almost like drifting, as if she was something from a dream, gliding through downtown Konoha's muck but not actually a part of it. She was beautiful, in the way only a full, mature woman could be.

Motherhood had been kind on Suruga-san, he reasoned.

Truly she didn't belong here, a beauty like that had no place being somewhere like this. The three story residences of this street all pressed together, barely a foot of clearance separating them. The ninja didn't jump from roof to roof here, they just sort of stepped. Most leering fools on the street didn't have all their teeth, and even the ones that did had brown and black ones.

His hand went to his wallet, didn't want it stolen, and he shot a glare at a one of the men leering at Suruga-san. She might not be his woman, but tonight was his night, and no one else could touch her.

It probably wasn't a long time, although for a young business man in this part of town it felt like quite a while. At most they walked for ten minutes until she drifted to an apartment building and he shuffled inside behind her. An old woman smoking on the stairs smirked at him as he passed behind Suruga-san, ash falling from the tip of her cigarette and scattering along the step. Something sticky greeted his fingers when he put his hand on the railing, and he resolved to wash his hands at the nearest opportunity.

Suruga-san stopped at a doorway, reaching for her keys when she caught his eye, then a smile parted her lips and he was captured by her beauty. Her perfect white teeth flashed as she turned, leaning against the door frame and beckoned him towards her. At the same time his hands found her waist, her's found his collar and pulled their faces together. She was tall for a woman, and their heads were at perfect height as they kissed, the tantalisingly sweet hint of alcohol on her breath only helped the taste of her lips.

Her hand creeped away from the collar of his robe, and towards his crotch. He was so entranced, that he didn't notice when the door next to them opened. She was so excited she didn't notice when someone called out, "Ka-san!" right next to her face. It was only when something loud whistled right next to them that they broke apart.

A girl stood there, two fingers leaving her mouth as she gave both the 'adults' an annoyed look. Koyomi noticed her wipe the small amount of spit from her fingers on her ill-fitting shirt, before she sighed and stepped aside.

"Sorry, Minami-chan." Suruga-san smiled that beautiful smile as she glided inside, but this Minami didn't seem affected by it, and how couldn't she? "How was school today?"

The girl brushed a strand of white/grey hair from her green/grey eyes, as she fixed Koyomi with a glare. The girl had almost no resemblance to her mother at all. "Sensei gave us back our semester's reports," she answered the question, but didn't seem to be paying her mother any attention. "I did well."

"That's nice." The mother bent down in front of something, and it took Koyomi a second to rip his eyes away from that young girl's fierce glare to see what it was. "And how's my little Minato-chan today?" The woman rose, a small toddler in her arms.

The baby didn't say anything, or respond to the mother's affections at all really.

"She's been hungry all day." And boy did it sound like Minami was blaming someone for that. "I was about to take her out for dinner."

"Oh, well you better get some lovely yummy wummies in Minato's little tummy, shouldn't you?"

"Have you got any money so I can buy her dinner?" Minami ignored the woman's tone, and little Minato bore it just as stoically.

Suruga-san put the baby down and turned to her daughter, reaching for her purse. Taking out a single 100 Ryo note, she pressed it into the girl's hand. "Here, this should get you two something nice."

Minami looked at the note, then up at the mother as if to say, _that's all?_

Turning back to face Koyomi, Suruga-san smiled at him. "Why don't you wait here while Minami and I go get changed?"

Koyomi smiled, and tried to ignore the glare he was getting from the girl. "I'll just watch Minato then." The moment he said that, he regretted it as Minami's eyes flashed dangerously at the mention of her sibling, and the little girl in question turned her gaze to him. Now these two had a fair amount of resemblance, at least in how sharp their glares were.

"Thank you." Suruga-san smiled, and she was the only one. "Come on, Minami-chan."

The angry stare left the room, following behind her mother, leaving just the youngest. The way the girl was looking at Koyomi… Was she evaluating him? Her eyes met his, glanced down at his clothes, then back up to his face. Then she snorted, dismissively at that, her eyes rolled slightly, and she picked up the book at her feet. He was surprised again as he realised the book was a dense one about history.

"What do you have there, Ojou-chan?"

"'Ojou-chan'?" she repeated, sounding bemused, before shaking her head and turning a page.

"...Look's like an interesting book." He ventured.

Lowering it, she turned to face him, an eyebrow raised.

He stared back at her for a minute, before smiling. "Do I have something on my face?"

"..." A three year old shouldn't have eyes that look like that.

"I don't think your big sister likes me very much. Do you know why?"

Then the girl snorted before replying, "Why do you think, kid?"

Wait, what? Did she just call him kid? "W-why?"

"Let me put it this way. Imagine, one night your Oka-san come home with a guy you've never met before, he's a decade younger than her, and you know he's planning on plugging her later that night."

He had no idea how to respond to that.

"Do you think you'd like the guy?"

"...Probably not."

"Alright, so do you think my sister likes you?"

"Well, no, but-"

She held a hand out to cut him off. "So do you think _I_ like you?"

"N-no, but-"

"Do you think either of us are _ever_ gonna like you?"

He closed his mouth and stared at the child.

She turned back to her book. "So then what the fuck have you got to say to me?"

* * *

><p>Konoha is a city that doesn't make any sense, but still makes sense in all the ways a city needs to.<p>

Oh sure, they call it a 'village', but this doesn't look like a clustered settlement larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town to me. I know what urban blight looks like: graffiti, petty crime, the smell of smoke and rotten dreams that gets into your clothes but never scrubs off your skin. Even if I don't hear people calling each other racial slurs, even if no one's doing drive-bys, or cocaine, it's still a slum, still the city's shit hole.

That's the part of this town that's clear to me. Rich getting richer, and the poor getting crapped on. They're the mouth, we're the flusher. The only thing that changes is what gets fed through one end and dumped out the other. It's the way the world works, it's the way it's worked since two people decided to build houses next to eachother.

Like I said, it makes sense.

But then again, they have electricity, but they don't have guns. The poor can't afford hair dye, but kids are running round with cotton candy growing out of their scalps. Twelve year olds walk down the street alone, and no one even thinks of messing with them because of some metal plate on their head. The people speak Japanese, but they buy things with Ryo rather than Yen. I haven't seen a car or heard a CD player since I got here, but if you got the cash you can check out the latest block-buster for a hundred fifty at the cinema.

And a two year old girl has the memories of a fifty four year old detective.

It doesn't make any goddamn sense.

And that annoys me, not understanding. Even after almost three decades as a detective, even after god knows how many unclosed cases, I still get that _itch _when I can't figure something out. When I was a fifty four year old man, I'd just take out a cigarette and scratch it with nicotine. Can't do that now though, because god knows I'd smack the cigarette out of a two year old's hand and these people would do the same thing.

I'd kill for a cigarette right now.

So many questions, and it's a good thing kids are allowed to ask questions.

For example: "Minami, why are there faces on that mountain?"

Which lead to, "What's a hokage?"

Then, "What do you mean… 'ninja'?"

And finally, "You're going to a school… for ninja's?"

And if she noticed how incredulous I was, she didn't show it. But honestly, ninjas? Are they all training to fight James Bond for the nefarious Doctor No? Just the way she, a nine year old, says it like it's the most normal thing in the world makes my head spin. It kinda reminds me of the way my kids explained to me what the shows they watched on Saturday mornings were about, like it made sense for a bunch of mutant ninja turtles to be named after famous artists.

But after I knew that, a lot more things started to pop into place. Like, why so many people walked around with swords and knives, or kept their faces covered, other small things like that. Raised a lot of other questions though, like where in the world do ninjas still exist?

Eventually I learned enough of this language that I could start reading a bit, and I nagged Minami into letting me come along for a few library visits. I still had a ways to go before I was up to par with Kanji, but history books still clued me in.

This isn't planet earth.

And everything makes complete sense.


End file.
